Balancing perfectly periodic service schedules: An application from recycling and waste management

A national recycling and waste management company provides periodic services to its customers from over 160 service centers. The services are performed periodically in units of weeks over a planning horizon. The number of truck‐hours allocated to this effort is determined by the maximum weekly workload during the planning horizon. Therefore, minimizing the maximum weekly workload results in minimum operating expenses. The perfectly periodic service scheduling (PPSS) problem is defined based on the practices of the company. It is shown that the PPSS problem is strongly NP‐hard. Attempts to solve large instances by using an integer programming formulation are unsuccessful. Therefore, greedy BestFit heuristics with three different sorting schemes are designed and tested for six real‐world PPSS instances and 80 randomly generated data files. The heuristics provide effective solutions that are within 2% of optimality on average. When the best found BestFit schedules are compared with the existing schedules, it is shown that operational costs are reduced by 18% on average. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 59: 160–171, 2012     

Determining crane areas for balancing workload among interfering and noninterfering cranes

This article treats the problem of subdividing an area for storing containers such that the workload is evenly shared among the cranes operating the resulting subareas. We consider two crane sets: while noncrossing constraints between cranes of the same set need to be observed, cranes of different sets do not interfere. Such a problem setting is, for instance, relevant for scheduling the (un‐)loading of vessels by parallel quay cranes operating on opposing berths or in container yards with cross‐over cranes. We formalize the resulting optimization problem, prove computational complexity, and present exact and heuristic solution procedures. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2012     

一种面向复杂地理空间栅格数据处理算法并行化的任务调度方法

随着并行计算技术的成熟,地理空间栅格数据处理算法的并行化研究成为新的热点。聚焦于处理流程包含多个计算步骤的复杂地理空间栅格数据处理算法,基于空间计算域理论,提出了一个随着算法处理流程而动态变化的任务调度方法。实验证明,该方法在算法流程的每一个计算步都会调整任务分组方案,因此相比于传统任务调度方法,任务调度的负载均衡效果更好,并行算法程序的运行时间更短。     

Scheduling and lot streaming in two‐machine open shops with no‐wait in process

We study the problem of minimizing the makespan in no‐wait two‐machine open shops producing multiple products using lot streaming. In no‐wait open shop scheduling, sublot sizes are necessarily consistent; i.e., they remain the same over all machines. This intractable problem requires finding sublot sizes, a product sequence for each machine, and a machine sequence for each product. We develop a dynamic programming algorithm to generate all the dominant schedule profiles for each product that are required to formulate the open shop problem as a generalized traveling salesman problem. This problem is equivalent to a classical traveling salesman problem with a pseudopolynomial number of cities. We develop and test a computationally efficient heuristic for the open shop problem. Our results indicate that solutions can quickly be found for two machine open shops with up to 50 products. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2005     

Production and transport logistics scheduling with two transport mode choices

This paper considers a new class of scheduling problems arising in logistics systems in which two different transportation modes are available at the stage of product delivery. The mode with the shorter transportation time charges a higher cost. Each job ordered by the customer is first processed in the manufacturing facility and then transported to the customer. There is a due date for each job to arrive to the customer. Our approach integrates the machine scheduling problem in the manufacturing stage with the transportation mode selection problem in the delivery stage to achieve the global maximum benefit. In addition to studying the NP‐hard special case in which no tardy job is allowed, we consider in detail the problem when minimizing the sum of the total transportation cost and the total weighted tardiness cost is the objective. We provide a branch and bound algorithm with two different lower bounds. The effectiveness of the two lower bounds is discussed and compared. We also provide a mathematical model that is solvable by CPLEX. Computational results show that our branch and bound algorithm is more efficient than CPLEX. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2005     

Basic scheduling problems with raw material constraints

One of the achievements of scheduling theory is its contribution to practical applications in industrial settings. In particular, taking finiteness of the available production capacity explicitly into account, has been a major improvement of standard practice. Availability of raw materials, however, which is another important constraint in practice, has been largely disregarded in scheduling theory. This paper considers basic models for scheduling problems in contemporary manufacturing settings where raw material availability is of critical importance. We explore single scheduling machine problems, mostly with unit or all equal processing times, and L_max and C_max objectives. We present polynomial time algorithms, complexity and approximation results, and computational experiments. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2005.     

Properties of the geometric and related processes

Some properties of the geometric process are studied along with those of a related process which we propose to call the α‐series process. It is shown that the expected number of counts at an arbitrary time does not exist for the decreasing geometric process. The decreasing version of the α‐series process does have a finite expected number of counts, under certain conditions. This process also has the same advantages of tractability as the geometric process; it exhibits some properties which may make it a useful complement to the increasing geometric process. In addition, it may be fit to observed data as easily as the geometric process. Applications in reliability and stochastic scheduling are considered in order to demonstrate the versatility of the alternative model. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2005     

基于时间序无圈有向图的多准则优化成像调度

合理有效地利用遥感卫星资源获取更多高质量影像数据是卫星成像调度的重要工作。提出了一种新的成像调度解决方案。应用图论相关理论,建立卫星成像时间序无圈有向图模型,利用多项准则作为衡量标准对不同成像路径进行评价,提出时间序多准则最短路径算法求取优化成像路径。理论分析和实验表明,该解决方案可以在较短时间内获得多条pareto优化成像路径,具有良好的调度性能。     

Flow‐shop batch scheduling with identical processing‐time jobs

In many practical situations of production scheduling, it is either necessary or recommended to group a large number of jobs into a relatively small number of batches. A decision needs to be made regarding both the batching (i.e., determining the number and the size of the batches) and the sequencing (of batches and of jobs within batches). A setup cost is incurred whenever a batch begins processing on a given machine. This paper focuses on batch scheduling of identical processing‐time jobs, and machine‐ and sequence‐independent setup times on an m‐machine flow‐shop. The objective is to find an allocation to batches and their schedule in order to minimize flow‐time. We introduce a surprising and nonintuitive solution for the problem. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004     

Single machine parallel batch scheduling subject to precedence constraints

We consider the single machine parallel batch scheduling problems to minimize makespan and total completion time, respectively, under precedence relations. The complexities of these two problems are reported as open in the literature. In this paper, we settle these open questions by showing that both problems are strongly NP‐hard, even when the precedence relations are chains. When the processing times of jobs are directly agreeable or inversely agreeable with the precedence relations, there is an O(n²) time algorithm to minimize the makespan. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2004